ANDREI MARGA
THE SENSE OF OUR-DAYS HISTORY
Editura Academiei Române, București, 2019
CONTENTS:
Preface
Resuming the Issue of Destiny………………………………..3
Consequences of the Great War…………………………….12
Le retour au triangle Jerusalem, Athenes, Rome…… 25
La culture européenne et les Juifs………………………….58
The Sense of Our-Days History ………………………………86
Re-affirming Identities………………………………………….118
Les alternatives de l’Europe ……………………………..151
Le contour de la société incertaine ……………………….181
The University and the Relativism ……………………..193
La crise de l’éducation. Indicateurs et solutions……220
The Post-Bologna University ……………………………….237
Author ……………………………………………………………….244
Preface
History is not over yet, as some may have inferred from a questionable reading of Hegel. As a matter of fact, we are once again facing fights, difficulties, profound historical alternatives and dilemmas.
Europe has registered many changes and renewal, but some old demons (social segregation, authoritarianism, mysticism) reappear now – against the background of huge technical development, democratization, and scientific revolutions – and new impulses are indispensable. Therefore, the question arises whether its cultural foundations should not be revisited. Under the impact of globalization and digitalization, the integration of the world is going on, but what happens to identities, from the personal ones up to the national identities? What about the existing democracies in societies of increased complexity? People’s dependence on life contexts is greater, but should universal values be abandoned under the circumstances? How could a guiding role in a world of a new complexity be conceived? Where is the present world heading to? What is the meaning of current history?
Reflexive pragmatism, the philosophy I have articulated – based on the assumption of the emergence of reality from reason as a will of reason and the distinction between various types of rationality corresponding to the actions that ensure the cultural reproduction of life – is capable to answer such questions and has been confirmed by recent evolutions. After a conceptualization pertaining to systematic philosophy1 and an endeavor to elucidate what is going on2, in the present volume, I examine some historical developments of our time focusing on the question of sense.
I bring to the attention of the reader recent analyses I advanced at the request of different think centers (Roma, Coimbra, Vienna, Montpellier, Maribor, Chișinău, etc.) and delivered on different occasions and printed, in which my conception was more directly expressed. Within them, personal contributions took shape – such as the resumption of the debate about the destiny of our culture, the re-establishment, in our approaches, of the European culture on the Jerusalem, Athens, Rome triangle, the theory of the variable geometry of the superpowers as the core of contemporary history, the theory of the reaffirmation of identities, the diagnosis of the uncertain society, the alternatives of the present Europe, the reconfiguration of the university as an engine of the historical developments – which all highlight a systematic commitment.
I have continually bent on facts and especially on their takeover in cultural consciousness. However, I have always considered that deep knowledge in the philosophy history is not an end as such, but a set of means to understand what it is, in the prospect of better possibilities. That is why history of philosophy, and theory in general, seem legitimate as they are prolonged to analyze the state of things. And, in fact, this is the approach and especially the practice of great philosophy always. As a result, my analyzes, anchored in the dilemmas of the time, remain philosophical. Or, in other words, they assume the issues lived by people today to give them a deeper answer, which is philosophical. In my view, the confrontation with the facts of history is blind without philosophy, and philosophy that is not able to face this struggle is void, at the edge of culture.
Andrei Marga, Cluj-Napoca, January 5, 2019